


Repede

by Rose Argent (roseargent)



Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Gen, Pre-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 11:45:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseargent/pseuds/Rose%20Argent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story of how Repede and Yuri's partnership grew, and how Repede became who he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repede

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kalloway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalloway/gifts).



> I tried to balance Repede's intelligence and his being non-human, but I'm not sure how well I succeeded. I apologise if he sounds too human.
> 
> There are some pretty significant contradictions between The First Strike and the game, where Repede's background is concerned. For the purposes of this story, I tended to go with the First Strike version if I couldn't make the two mesh cohesively. Also, major spoilers for The First Srike ahoy.
> 
> I tagged the fic gen and as featuring only Yuri and Repede, but Flynn does make a brief appearance. It's Flynn/Yuri if you squint at it just right, but it's by no means a major thing so I left it tagged as is.
> 
> That said, I hope you like the story!

At first, Repede had loved Yuri in the way that all puppies love all people--without thought, reserve, or care for whether the love is returned. If Yuri sometimes pushed him away it was no more upsetting than when his father picked him up by the scruff; just a natural effect of being a puppy among adults. If Repede even knew that Yuri was his particular person only because he was ordered to be, he certainly didn't care. After his father Repede loved Yuri best of all, and when he got to be with both his father and Yuri at the same time, well, that was all the goodness in the world. Yuri brought excitement, too, in a way that no one else seemed to. Things _happened_ when Yuri was around. 

But not all exciting things that happened were good, and that lesson was one of the hardest Repede would ever learn.

It had all seemed so normal at first. Yuri came home smelling of blood and of Repede's father, and these things meant nothing in particular to Repede except that exciting things had happened and he had missed them. So he waited for his father to come back, too, and make everything right in the world. Even when Yuri held him, and told him what had happened, Repede didn't quite understand. That first night, going to sleep with no others of his kind nearby, was when Repede came to understand that death meant not coming home, ever again.

Yuri stayed with him that night, and that warm weight curled around him was so like his father's that Repede slept soundly, and dreamed only of sunny fields and happy games. That was when Repede came to love Yuri for being Yuri, for being a human who would tell him the truth, even when it was awful, and grieve with him as surely as if Lambert had been one of his own kind. 

Then Flynn came back, and Repede learned that even people who loved each other could lash out and come to blows, hurting each other because they were grieving and lost and needed something to hit. He howled because his people were hurting, and because he would never have total faith in the goodness of humans again.

And then all his people left at once, and this time Repede knew that it was possible that they would never come back. Repede knew, too, that he was too small to help them, and for the first time in his short life he wished that he was not a puppy, but something else. 

If Repede had been bigger, or stronger, would the Captain have come home alive? The thought wouldn't leave him, in the days that followed, and he wondered if all dogs thought these things at some time or another. Was it part of growing out of puppyhood? There was no one to tell him. And so, when Yuri chose to leave the pack and strike off on his own, Repede chose to follow.

On the long journey back to the city Yuri called home, Repede tried to watch every animal that they encountered. If he couldn't learn from other dogs, then he would learn from everyone, from everything around him. When they encountered monsters, now he really watched the way Yuri fought. He learned how the sword gave Yuri extra reach, extra power, and he wondered if that was the answer to his weak puppy body. When they camped for the night, again and again Repede tossed the Captain's pipe in the air, watching it spin and catch the light, just the way Yuri's sword did. 

But there was no way to ask Yuri about weapons, and Repede let the thought settle into the back of his mind, for now. There were many other new things to see and smell and explore, after all.

By the time they reached the city, Repede had fooled himself into thinking himself an experienced traveller. After all, he'd come all this way, and he'd known human places before. But the size of the city--the size of the lower quarter alone--was beyond anything Repede could have expected. He'd spent the first three days sneezing almost constantly, his nose under assault from all the smells. He hid from the noise and the scents and especially the people--strangers to him, if not to Yuri--all of them wanting to touch him, pet him, play with him. 

Yuri seemed to understand, because he started bringing people by their room one or two at a time. Older humans, at first, who were calm and spoke quietly and ignored Repede unless he approached them first. Later, Yuri brought the little humans and taught them the right way to approach Repede. One scent--one human--at a time, Repede catalogued the people Yuri trusted, and if he didn't ever quite warm up to some of them himself, he at least came to tolerate them. And the human children, once they learned not to pull on his tail or his ears, actually made Repede _want_ to play, for the first time since his father died.

Sometimes Flynn came, and even though he argued with Yuri more often than not it never felt as bad as it had before. It took a few of those visits before Repede decided that these fights felt more like when his father had scolded him for something, except that both Yuri and Flynn thought they were the in the right and Repede had never even imagined that his father could be wrong. They were both being kind of stupid, as far as Repede was concerned, but he figured they would get over it sooner or later.

It wasn't until the day Repede left the lower quarter alone, to explore the rest of the city, that he realised he'd become much more like Yuri than he'd realised. 

Little Wolf was older than Repede and, even though Repede had grown in the last few months, Little Wolf was bigger and stronger still. There should have been no question that Repede would fall in line with what Little Wolf said, just like the rest of the animals of the city. And yet, the first time Repede encountered Little Wolf, he found that he viewed the older dog's orders as irrelevant. Repede lived with Yuri, and did his own thing. He didn't need or want the so-called protection of the master of the city's animals. He returned to the lower quarter and simply put Little Wolf out of his mind entirely.

The second time they crossed paths Repede learned that, unlike Lambert, Little Wolf wouldn't stop at grabbing Repede by the scruff and shaking him a bit.

This time, Repede only just barely made it back to the lower quarter, collapsing just within the entrance to the fountain square. He vaguely heard a high-pitched shriek, then someone crying, and thought for a moment that Little Wolf had followed him--though later he would wonder why he ever thought he would be of interest to Little Wolf in such a piteous state. He tried to get back to his feet, to defend this place, at least, but his legs wouldn't hold him and what was left of his vision began to go dark. He heard Yuri call his name, then, and in his relief he forgot to struggle, and he let the darkness rise up and take him.

When Repede woke next, there were human hands touching him in places that _hurt_ , hurt more than he could bear, and all Repede wanted was for the pain to go away. He snarled, and tried to open his eyes, which somehow hurt even more and before he knew what he was doing he snapped his teeth shut on the nearest bit of human flesh. The taste of blood flooded his mouth and Repede suddenly knew _shame_ , knew that he had done something unforgivable. He let go of the person he'd bitten, and finally managed to get one eye open. 

Yuri was looking down at him, holding his bleeding arm with his other hand, but he was smiling. Not just with his mouth, the way he did when he was really angry but trying not to show it, but with his scent and his body language, too. "It's okay," he was saying to Repede, but the other human in the room--the one with Repede's blood on his hands and the scent of medicine all around him--seemed to think Yuri was talking to him. 

"Oh, I understand. Animals in pain can be dangerous." The stranger was trying to sound calm, but Repede could smell that he really wasn't, and he was still pressed up against the wall like he was trying to sink into it.

Since the human seemed to have no intention of helping Yuri, Repede picked up a gel someone had dropped, holding it carefully without biting down, and offered it to Yuri. 

Yuri's smile came back, and he shook his head. "I'm fine, Repede. The gels are for you." Repede looked at him dubiously, tilting his head to get a better view of Yuri with the one eye that still worked, and Yuri rolled up his sleeve to bare his forearm. "See? You barely broke the skin." And it was true--the punctures were shallow, the bleeding already just a trickle. Repede knew he could do more damage than that--had done more damage than that, and Little Wolf would have a scar to prove it--and wondered if it was because he was so weakened by his injuries, or if he'd realised it was Yuri, at the very last second.

"You're wasting lemon gels on a _dog_?" The other human was starting to reach towards Repede again, too shocked to remember he was scared, and Repede changed his mind about refusing the gel. He swallowed it and snorted dismissively at the stranger.

"Thanks for doing the stitches, but I think we can get by on our own from here." Yuri's voice sounded amused, but there was a stiffness to his shoulders that said he really wasn't very amused at all. Repede had long since learned to trust what humans said with their bodies above what they said with their words. The medicine-smelling human made a face and a little huffing noise, but at least he did leave.

With the stranger gone and the situation less tense, Repede found that he was feeling very tired and the pain of his injuries was getting worse again. There were things he needed to know, and things he needed to think about, but his body simply wasn't going to give him the time just yet. He closed his right eye again, wondering fuzzily if his left eye was still there under all the bandages, and with Yuri's warm presence at his back he drifted into sleep. 

Repede woke and ate and slept again, and would barely have known that days were passing if not for the changing patterns of light on the floor. Yuri was there every time he woke, ready with food or fresh bandages or gels, ready to carry Repede outside when he needed to go, and every day that passed left Yuri looking a little more drained.

One time when Repede woke Flynn was there, sitting on Yuri's bed. He saw that Repede was awake, and smiled, but didn't say anything. Yuri was asleep, his head pillowed on Flynn's leg, and Flynn's hand was resting on Yuri's hair. Repede closed his eye again and pretended to sleep. He pretended, too, that he didn't hear--or understand--the things Flynn murmured when he finally rose and tucked Yuri properly into bed. Flynn paused by Repede's bed on his way out, and touched Repede lightly on the top of his head. "Thanks." 

After the door closed behind Flynn, Repede looked up at Yuri's sleeping form and wondered just what Flynn had been thanking him for.

Soon Repede was recovered enough to get restless, and he started working on getting his strength back. Yuri checked to make sure he wasn't re-opening any wounds, but otherwise let Repede do as he chose. Repede figured it was because Yuri knew he would be just the same, if he was the one injured. It took some getting used to, moving around with only one eye, but Repede's other injuries forced him to take it slow enough that at least he didn't run into anything too hard.

Eventually Repede felt enough like his old self to really start thinking about how he could be _better_ than his old self. Waiting until he was physically a match for Little Wolf would mean months or even a year of hiding, and that was just not acceptable. And so Repede came back to that long ago thought about the way humans used weapons to compensate for their frail, blunt-toothed bodies. 

Yuri came back from buying supplies one day to find Repede dragging his sword around by the hilt, trying to flip it into the air the way he did Niren's pipe. Repede froze, the sword dangling from his mouth, and waiting for Yuri to laugh. He waited for Yuri to say that dogs were not meant to fight as men fight, that swords were not for him. Yuri was silent for an awfully long time, just looking at Repede, but when he knelt to take the sword away, he wasn't laughing. He cleaned the hilt of the sword, and frowned a little at the nicks and dents in the blade, but what he said was only, "This is too long for you. Let's try a knife, instead." 

The first knife Yuri gave him was blunt-edged, and Repede resented that a little less every time he mistimed his catch and ended up with the blade in his mouth instead of the hilt, or it landed on his head, or his paw, or went flying off in some seemingly random direction. Eventually he admitted that blunt practice weapons were probably one of the smarter things humans had ever invented. 

And when Repede mastered the practice knife, Yuri didn't suddenly change his mind and decide that maybe dogs should not have weapons after all--no, he bought Repede a real knife right away. Learning to use the knife and items at the same time led to a whole new series of humiliating mistakes, but Repede mastered that, too. Around that time, somehow, the people of the lower quarter got wind of what was going on and things just sort of started to appear in their room when they were out. First there was a leather baldric sized and shaped for a dog, then an item pouch to hang off it, with no notes to say who they were from. No one in the lower quarter would admit to leaving them, and it never occurred to Yuri to ask Repede to track down the scents left on the gifts, so Yuri couldn't even try to give them back out of some silly human pride thing.

The last mysterious gift was by far the most valuable. One day they came home from practice to find a bodhi blastia sitting on the bed, set in a ring just the right size to fit around the base of Repede's tail. Yuri stared at it for a long time, and then sat on the bed and picked it up, turning it over and over in his hands, muttering, "We can't accept this. They can't afford this... there's no way." Repede wondered whether, if he could speak the human language, he would have told Yuri that the blastia smelled not of any of the full-time residents of the lower quarter, but of Flynn. But he couldn't tell Yuri, and that was probably just as well, so Repede only put his head on Yuri's knee and looked up at him, waiting for the fit of misplaced guilt to end. Yuri looked down at him and sighed, then shrugged it off and laughed instead. "Oh well. I've been letting the Captain's gift go to waste too long, myself. I guess we need to find some books on artes, for both of us. I'll read them to you."

Repede barked and gave his pipe a little toss into the air in celebration. He knew he would have to deal with Little Wolf soon, and he knew that this quiet life with Yuri could only last so long, but for the moment it didn't matter. The thought of having a blastia of his own had made things just sort of click into place for Repede at last, like he was finally settling into his own fur. He had a partner he could trust, and who trusted him. A partner who let him be what he was, even if that wasn't entirely a dog. Repede was Repede. Yuri was Yuri. They'd walk their own unique path, and what else could he ever want?


End file.
